Heather Connelly (Tasha Biering) is the head cheerleader at her high school. The football team is struggling and some people think that it is because they have been jinxed by their terrible cheer squad. One night, while she is at home alone, Heather keeps getting calls from a stalker while someone kills the cheer coach and all of the other cheerleaders. The budget is low and the acting is terrible but the killer carries a sharp blade and every kill features a close-up of a body part getting cut off so if you’re into that, I guess this movie is for you.
There were two things that stood out about this movie. Blaming the cheer squad for your football team sucking is not cool but it is something that happens. I cheered in high school and we always took more blame for our team losing than the team itself did. It was weird because we really weren’t even a big sports school. We didn’t even have our own athletic field. Our football team had to go over to our rival high school to practice! But somehow, it was the cheerleaders who got all the dirty looks whenever the team went o-10.
Secondly, the movie opens with a voice mail to the director for a cheer mom threatening to sue him if “your movie Head Cheerleader Dead Cheerleader” led to any trouble for her daughter’s cheer squad. I have no doubt that the voice mail was real because I met a lot of crazy cheer moms when I was in high school. You know those stories you hear about mothers who get so invested in their daughter’s cheerleader career that they tribe to bribe the cheer coach or hire a hitman to take out their rival? We invented that in Texas! Taking a director to court is actually one of the less extreme things that I’ve heard about a cheer mom threatening to do. I think the mom was worrying over nothing, though. No one would mistake anyone in this movie for an actual cheerleader.
